


Sand, Sabacc, and the Stupid "Jedi Purge"

by wormghoul



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: First work - Freeform, Gen, OC, from a tumblr prompt, fuck this is bad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-02
Updated: 2016-12-02
Packaged: 2018-09-06 01:50:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8729968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wormghoul/pseuds/wormghoul
Summary: A boring occupation leads to bored officers which then leads into a friendly game of cards until a high priority order from Grand Army HQ comes through.
Prompt: One of the clone commanders is on a planet with heavy radiation that causes crazy comms interference, causing Order 66 to come in garbled and sound like a Palpatine Techno Remix. He is confused and his Jedi lives.





	

The Separatist capture of JanFathal was long and brutal. This was in part due to Gilad Pellaeon piloting a nonoperational Leveler directly into the beginning invasion. But that blunder was almost a year ago, an embittering fact for the few delegations of the Grand Army of the Republic that were stationed on-planet. From their base in the desert, the 673rd and their Jedi General, the Twi’leki Rheko Na’a, had nothing to do but settle small skirmishes and chase down empty leads. This day wa no different than any other. No battle alerts had come through for nearly a week and the message relay indicated the Grand Army hadn’t called them for extraction. So as the sun rose fat and bright in the sky everyone was prepared to spend the day waiting for something to do. 

The war room sat in the center of the camp to protect it from the blowing sand that formed the background music of the planet. The sand and sun were such terrible reminders of their impotence that some men were quoted as saying they’d rather be on Hoth, since they’d at least need to run to be warm. Rheko Na’a sat meditating in front of the main window, her trance was shallow though, the heavy feeling of irritation weighing on her mind. 

“Trying to stave off the boredom with some Jedi nonsense, sir?” The rough voice of her commander echoed off the walls of her mind. Mismatch, so named for his heterochromic mutation, had never understood meditation, saying, why not just take a nap, wouldn’t that achieve the same results? The jedi’s eye twitched as she tried to maintain a sense of calm. 

“Yes, Miz, I’m trying to do literally anything to entertain myself in this busy engagement” Rheko was young and still snarky, which was definitely evident in her tone. With that statement, whatever was left of her trance was broken, so she opened her eyes and met those of her commander. “Was there something you needed?” she asked, exhaling deeply. Mismatch cleared his throat and spoke, 

“Yeah, Jet, Sucker, Tank, and I need one more man for a good game of cards. If you’d do us the honor, that is, if not we can drag Zilch from the mess tent.” Somehow his tone remained professional, as if he was asking his General to authorize a scout mission instead of chatting her up for a game of sabacc. A smile slid across Rheko’s face and her lekku perked up. 

“Fine, as long as we aren’t playing Corellian Spike style, since you know Jet cheats.” she said as she stood and dusted off her robes. She would enjoy a good game of cards, especially since the boys gambled with chore duties and she could learn just who had beef with who that day based on the “ganging up” against one or more clones. 

The game chugged along merrily, with Jet going bust in two hands and earning a total of 3 sand dusting shifts for tomorrow. The mood was good and the sound of laughter and jovial trash talking rose above the noise of sand pelting the base. It was almost good. But then the holocards fuzzed out, signalling some sort of abnormality. The ground began to rumble and the base creaked gently as the ground below them shook.The base’s power waned with a gentle hum as back up generators hurried to make up the difference. On one of the instrument panels, a ground quake alarm dinged and overhead lights flashed hazard red. When the shaking stopped, Mismatch vaulted over the small table to turn off the alarm. 

“Aye, did you enjoy the little light show? Most exciting it's been in weeks here, eh?” he shouted from across the room. He glanced down at the instrument panel and groaned. “Blasted quake opened a core pocket of radiation, so our long range transmitters are a bust for at least an hour until the count goes down enough for anything to break through with any kind of clarity.” Mismatch meandered his way back to the little table and plopped down in his seat. “Without LR’s we’re stuck here indefinitely! Oh no, how tragic.” he gestured elaborately, pretending to faint with such a melodramatic flair he earned a chuckle from the group. 

The game continued for twenty minutes until another beeping started, this time coming from the communications panel. Tentatively the commander walked towards it, even though it was most likely to be garbled garbage, the innate sense was drilled into him to do so. As he got closer, his steps grew quicker, as the message board read: AUREK PRIORITY FROM CORUSCANT. A new heaviness fell over the room, were they being recalled? Had something terrible happened? Had Kenobi finally killed that droid bastard Grievous? He pressed the button.

The image of a man flickered chaotically and so did the audio. All that could be made out was the number 66, the word jedi, and the word traitor. “Do yo-yo-your...d-duty, good soldi-di-diers...follow-llow ordeeers” strained through the speakers, it sounded like a recut command audio and it also sounded terrible. And to make it look like it came from Coruscant command was cruel. They’d been on this sand ball for months without words from the GAR, so this was another layer of unbelievability. A look of concern plastered across Rheko’s face and one of confusion then anger spread across Mismatch’s face. 

“Miz, what was that?” she asked, laying her cards face down. 

“It’s the dumbest karking prank Zilch has ever pulled and by Force is he going to regret it.” he answered, deleting the message. When he got no response from his brothers or his jedi, he elaborated. 

“He re-cut some command audio and spoofed the transmitter to look like it came from HQ. I swear he was taken out of his growth jar too soon. And I swear he’s on dust duty for the next week! No! Two!” He returned to the game and picked his cards, effectively knocking out Jet for the third time, and into another sand shift.

But, thanks to Zilch’s lack of brain cells, Jet was elated.

**Author's Note:**

> you're all welcome for this absolute trash.  
> I couldn't think of a new name for my jedi character here so I substituted Rheko Na'a, who is my Jedi Knight on SWTOR and eventually I want to write about her misadventures with Scourge hence the "New Republic" Distinction.


End file.
